R.O was educated at Royal Grammar School Newcastle, and went on to Bromsgrove School - made possible by R G Routh, his father's contemporary at Trinity Oxford, who took Ronald in as his guest. R.O's university studies were delayed because of the War. He led a very active war joining up on 4 September 1914. He enlisted into the 21st service battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, but was soon commissioned in the 18th Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers. Throughout the war he received various promotions. On 1 January 1918 he was awarded the Military Cross, and Bar a year later. (He retaliated by recommending for the DSO his school friend Lionel Whitby - later knighted for his part in discovering sulphonamides.) In March of that year R.O was wounded in the thigh, and returned to England, but by 24 April he was back in France and reappointed. He finally returned to England on 14 January 1919.

He went to Brasenose College, where he had won an Exhibition, but was not particularly well taught. He delighted in the verdict of his examiners: "Hall's bad scholarship and general illiteracy detracted from his work, but we liked it." In the summer R.O was elected to membership of the General Council of the Student Christian Movement. In September 1920 he became inter-collegiate secretary in Newcastle with responsibility for SCM work in Durham and Sunderland. This meant he only spent the long vacation term at theological college at Cuddesdon - he always regretted that he had thus had inadequate training. He was ordained at Michaelmas 1920 with a curacy 'title' at St Nicholas Cathedral provided he lived at 1 Winchester Terrace, his father's Vicarage.

In November 1914 R.O had been posted to Ashtead in Surrey, where through his father's brother Frank he met and fell in love with Nora Suckling Baron. Her father died in 1921 just after they were engaged, and her mother refused to allow her to get married straightaway. After 2 years R.O wanted to move on in his vocation. Nora's mother allowed the wedding on the condition that only R.O's parents were there, with his brother Berners as best man and Nora's brother to give her away. They were married on 24 April 1923.

As a SCM secretary his work was basically pastoral. On 25 November 1920 R.O was asked also to become Missionary Secretary. This meant disrupting his first year of ministry and interrupted his pastoral work. R.O was priested in Southwark with a largely nominal curacy in the parish of St John Waterloo. With his missionary post, he was sent to a conference in Peking in April 1922. This experience of a new culture committed him to China, and also restored to him the gift of friendship after the trauma of war. After the conference he was made joint head of the SCM International Department which was very hard work. In 1925 he was invited by his Chinese friend T.Z Koo, who had been at the Peking conference to spend a year with the YMCA in Shanghai, with Nora and Joc their new-born son. It was this year that made R.O a 'China-man'. He was given the Chinese name Ming Hwa, which can be translated 'He who understands China'.

On his return, he went in April 1927 to the parish of St Luke's Newcastle, a situation he knew well. While there he wheeled a soup-kitchen through the streets with his curate, Billy Greer (later Bishop of Manchester), and founded the Newcastle Housing Improvement Trust. His second child Judith was born there in 1929.

In 1932 he was selected as Bishop of Hong Kong and South China. His father preached at his Consecration in St Paul's Cathedral on 28 October. From then on for 34 years he was wholly devoted to the people of China and Hong Kong. His diocese stretched across South China to Tibet with about 77 million people. He was very keen to break down denominational prejudices.

To escape the heat of Central Hong Kong which made his children ill, he built a bungalow on a hill in the New Territories, financed by subletting most of his official residence. In 1935 Nora had their last child Christopher. She took Joc to school in England in 1938, and then in 1940 sailed with Judith and Christopher to England round Africa leaving R.O behind. Their ship was bombed off Ireland, but after 30 hours in a lifeboat they landed in Glasgow in February 1941. R.O in Hong Kong was deeply shocked when by chance the news reached him.

In the autumn of 1941, R.O went to USA. He was persuaded to go by his old friend Leonard Wilson, then Dean of Hong Kong, who was leaving to become Bishop of Singapore, where he was imprisoned and tortured. So R.O was still fund-raising in USA, after delivering lectures later published as The Art of the Missionary, when Hong Kong fell following the attack on Pearl Harbour. He returned to Free China via England in 1942.

R.O is probably best known as the bishop who ordained the first Anglican woman priest in 1944 - Florence Li Tim-Oi. She had graduated from theological college in Canton, and made a deacon in Hong Kong cathedral. She was appointed to a parish in Macao which it became impossible for priests to visit, so she was given permission by the assistant bishop to celebrate Holy Communion. On 25 January 1944 in China R.O ordained her a 'priest in the Church of God' licensing her to serve in his diocese. He did not see this action as exceptionally brave - he said he was 99% coward; he knew, that by so doing, he would never be entrusted with a diocese back in England. He was confirming that God had already given her the gift of priesthood. The Church Times termed him 'a wild man of the woods'. 31 years later it printed its tribute to his life on the back of its record of the votes by Church of England dioceses in favour of ordaining women.

R.O's life's work was to lead the church in working for the Kingdom as Hong Kong's population multiplied by ten. R.O founded 30 churches and established 50 primary and 13 secondary schools. He also launched many welfare agencies. His influence on the church in China was profound.

In 1966 R.O retired and they went to live at Home Farm, a house in Lewknor Oxfordshire they had bought in 1936. It had been a place to spend holidays and for the children to stay when not at school. Nora's mother had lived there until 1941. R.O relished his grandchildren, but slowly began to age with various medical problems. Many visited them from China and Britain. After he had had a non-malignant cist removed from his vocal chords, in November 1974 they went to Jersey. There he had a tracheotomy to remove scar tissue obstructing his breathing. They returned to England where his lack of speech made him weary of life. Admitted to hospital for possible further surgery to improve his digestion, he died in his sleep on 22 April 1975.

His ashes and Nora's are interred in the sanctuary of St Margaret's Church Lewknor. On the wall above them his memorial reads: "He showed us how the Christ he talked about is living now." - adapted with permission from words in Sydney Carter's poem 'Present Tense', which RO himself had chosen to preface a book which never reached publication. Listen to him dictating it here.

• It is a 28mb file to download. If an error message appears, copy and paste http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~achall/rohdictating.mp3 into your browser.

His biography by Canon David Paton was published in 1984, and is still available from his son Christopher. He has been included in the Oxford Diocesan Calendar of Commemorations.